In one conversation I had with my Nigerian-born business partner (OK stop laughing I'm serious. He's been a naturalized citizen for ten years, is a Christian, the son of a pastor, and I know one of his brothers as well. He's good people.) I learned that it's very much like India multiplied in that no decisions are made without palms being greased. I also learned that Nigerians who come to America will not do business with other Nigerians due to the level of corruption. It's not that all Nigerians are corrupt, it's just that corruption is so pervasive that they don't trust one another.
(Interesting thing about him: he's very suspicious, is more pro-American than most native-born Americans, gets far more involved in politics than most of us do, and yet when he sees evil going on in this country he doesn't complain. He just laughs and says evil people will do evil things, and what can be accomplished by talking about it and then continues on with his work. As an aside, he's the most productive worker I've ever encountered as well.)
My guess? Some official initially chose Linux as the sensible solution, and then Microsoft's money greased a high-level official's palms. I don't think it's necessarily Microsoft that did it, but a third party (plausible deniability, elimination of a paper trail involving even swag, etc.) which somehow benefits from the sale of Windows rather than installation of a(n) (inexpensive|free)/free OS.
RIAA equalization is a specification for the correct playback of gramophone records, established by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The purpose of the equalization is to permit greater playback times, improve sound quality, and to limit the physical extremes that would otherwise arise from recording analog records without such equalization.
. ..[snip]. ..
RIAA equalization is therefore a form of preemphasis on recording, and deemphasis on playback. A record is cut with the low frequencies reduced and the high frequencies boosted, and on playback the opposite occurs. The result is a flat frequency response, but with noise such as hiss and clicks arising from the surface of the medium itself much attenuated. The other main benefit of the system is that low frequencies, which would otherwise cause the cutter to make large excursions when cutting a groove, are much reduced, so grooves are smaller and more can be fitted in a given surface area, yielding longer playback times. This also has the benefit of eliminating physical stresses on the playback stylus which might otherwise be hard to cope with, or cause unpleasant distortion.
A potential drawback of the system is that rumble from the playback turntable's drive mechanism is greatly amplified, which means that players have to be carefully designed to avoid this.
RIAA equalization is not a simple low-pass filter. It carefully defines transition points in three places - 75 s, 318 s and 3180 s, which correspond to 2122 Hz, 500 Hz and 50 Hz. Implementing this characteristic is not especially difficult, but more involved than a simple linear amplifier. The phono input of most hi-fi amplifiers have this characteristic built in, though it is omitted in many modern designs, due to the gradual obsolescence of vinyl records. A solution in this case is to buy a special preamplifier which will adapt a magnetic cartridge to a standard line-level input, and implement the RIAA equalization curve separately. Some modern turntables feature built-in preamplification to the RIAA standard. Special preamplifiers are also available for the various equalization curves used on pre-1954 records.
"Despite even this level of throttling, Internet traffic, even on the best broadband connection, won't be affected. That's because the multiplicity of intermediate connections between your system and another one on the Internet fragments packets and slows down packet travel, and therefore reduces the rate at which systems transfer data.
No kidding. However on the LAN the slowest point is the switch, which should never, ever throttle traffice by an order of magnitude or more. It should throttle only latency, and by 3ms at the very worst if you have an uber-crappy $30 switch. So, in the SOHO environment and certainly in the enterprise environment, this "minor" bug can have tremendous detrimental effects on usability.
And don't forget this is just the DRM bug, let alone the running out of memory when copying files bug.
FWIW. PCI-E is supposed to allow for hot swap. I wouldn't do it on a home system, but were I involved in testing PCI-E components in a test lab, I would absolutely include hotplugging tests.
When DRM causes networking performance to drop by more than an order of magnitude, and device driver upgrades result in OS deactivation, one tends to ignore any other features which are claimed to be present, especially when legitimate paying customers are affected but "pirates" are unaffected by activation bugs.
People said no such thing about Win2K. The only real complaint was it required more memory than Win98, but it was considered a tremendous upgrade over Win98/98se, Me, and even NT 4.0. In fact it was such a HUGE improvement to the NT Family of operating systems that NO ONE missed NT 4.0, except perhaps a few paper MCSEs who loved that NT was sometimes a pain in the ass to add hardware to and were in fear of their jobs.
No, Win2K was a HUGE upgrade and no one had any real complaints about it compared to previous Windows versions. Likewise, aside from a few Activation concerns, there were few complaints about the Win2K3 upgrade. XP and Vista on the other hand, offered little in exchange for eye candy and DRM.
I'm sure the rules have something to disqualify it
They sure do.
If we RTFA we will note:
To win the prize, teams must demonstrate a rocket-propelled[emphasis mine. -Kim] vehicle and payload that takes off vertically, climbs to a defined altitude, flies for a pre-determined amount of time, and then land vertically on a target that is a fixed distance from the launch pad.
If we RTFS we will note:
To win the prize, teams must demonstrate a rocket-propelled[emphasis mine. -Kim] vehicle and payload that takes off vertically
So yeah, a model helicopter need not apply. Besides, a $100 RC helicopter can barely carry a micro-camera, battery, and video transmitter, let alone the kind of payload NASA wants.
Tagged this one: censorship netneutrality unlimitedinternet fraud
So much for "unlimited Internet"
They really ought to call it "unlimited access to the comcast.net portal, access to everything else has to be approved by us.";)
I still can't get FIOS at home or at work - they will still run it only into single-family homes and into single-business structures around here. However once they do I'm thinking of switching. I download linux distro updates all the time, and last I checked that is legitimate content. Comcast should not be in the business of discriminating network traffic unless it's malicious and intended to disrupt the Internet at large (such as a worm or DDoS).
tagged this article: obvioustothoseskilledintrade priorart
Excuse me, while I submit a patent application on "naming a URL on a web site such that it is easy for humans to remember"
Likewise, I think I will also apply for patent protection on "method for entering natural languages and/or numbers into a computer through a mechanical or electronic peripheral" with a complementary patent covering "method for laying out alphabets and numerals on strategically-placed buttons, imprints, or images" - I think I shall call such device a "keyboard" or "keypad"
I've posted about this issue before but was accused of making shit up just to slam Microsoft.
Wrong. I used to be a die-hard Microsoft fan, until they introduced the broken Activation scheme. Even back in the days of Windows XP. driver upgrades or reinstalls could de-activate Windows. This is why I am so adamantly against Activation schemes - at least schemes which do not allow for license transfers. It sucks, too. If delivering a bunch of workstations to a client where the client wants them pre-activated and added to their domain, you have to activate the system. Now, sometimes one will run into incompatibilities and have to upgrade a wireless driver or video driver (or add additional hardware - and yes, I've even seen USB device driver upgrades trigger deactivation) and if you've got the OEM version, guess what? You need to wait on hold with Microsoft to re-activate the system.
Granted, it doesn't happen often. It does have a knack of happening at exactly the wrong time.
Microsoft: you own the market. Drop the activation scheme. Also, where XP is nearing end of life, isn't it time to follow through with your promise to release a patch which will eliminate the need to activate Windows XP? I mean, Vista has been out for nearly a year now. . .
I get it for the guide, mostly, plus the on demand programming. So they're pixellated. Big frigging deal. If I see a movie I like and care enough to watch again with a better quality picture, I buy the DVD.:)
Or maybe most people just don't want to pay the true cost of their phone so the service providers have to find some way to make sure they can still make a profit!
There are a lot of people out there willing to pay full price for even locked-down phones. iPhone, anyone?
Next up: book publishers will limit where you can read their books. I can see it now:
"Permission is granted to read this book only while sitting outdoors in the shade of a poplar tree. Reading this book in a coffee shop, in bed, on your sofa, in direct sun, or under the shade of any species of tree besides poplar is expressly forbidden. Also, while it is technically possible to use magnifying glasses and reading lamps to aid the reading of small printed text by those who are visually impaired, the use of magnification devices is also expressly forbidden therefore it is unlawful for you to do so."
No one (Congress, the FCC, whoever) is going to make CableCards available to people like me who build their own MythTV systems because users would engage in the legal act of timeshifting, and skip commercials.
. . . the less interested I become in their "product"
Keep fighting your customers, RIAA. You're alienating us all, thousands at a time. See my previous posts on the matter. I bought more CDs at the height of Napster (the original Napster) than I did in the 13 years of owning CD players previous to that. I have bought approximately SIX music CDs TOTAL since you succeeded in shutting down Napster (ded kitty -- http://i.afterdawn.com/news/napster_mainpage_2002_09_04.gif ).
What do I listen to now? Music I already own. Talk radio. Classical. Christian radio.
no new pop stations. No hard rock stations. I avoid getting exposed to new material, because if I listen to new material on the radio, I am supporting you indirectly by listening to paid-for-by-advertising content. If I listen to new material, I'd be tempted to download it, which will lead to viral marketing if I talk to so-and-so about this great new song I downloaded. . . and I would be tempted to purchase it, which would directly send you profits. No, instead I decided to completely avoid it and not be your customer, directly or indirectly. I'm sure I am not the only one.
Why *should* an email program have *integrated* calendaring?
* centralized administration * simplified administration * Single login (why do you think Web Single Login is such a big deal at enterprise sites?) * simple user experience; configure calendaring and email accounts is done in one step, in one place * ability to forward meeting/event agenda without jumping through hoops * GROUP calendaring and email are by nature integral - an integrated solution creates the meetings as one entity internally, tallies meeting requests receipt, responses, etc. plus it works together truly seamlessly. calendaring-over-webdav is a bit of a hack.
At one time long long ago I worked at what was at the time the calendaring application leader - but even then Microsoft's initial calendaring offerings were gaining market share. Not because they were superior (at the time they weren't) but because of the integration. When Exchange was released, it was all over. Integrated email, calendaring, notes, and task lists was the killer app corporations were long asking for (the vendor I worked for REFUSED to integrate their email and calendaring solutions, claiming it didn't make sense, despite being one of the sponsors of the ical/vcal standard). Microsoft may screw a lot of things up, and they rarely get operating systems right, but Exchange, for all its faults, was a major winner and it was innovative.
"A piece of video has emerged in which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says of Google, 'they read your mail and we don't.'
Yeah, well, Google clearly discloses what they do with email, and that keyword-based advertising may be displayed based on the contents of an email. They disclose what, how, and why.
Contrast this to the Windows EULA, which does NOT disclose the fact that the OS will phone home daily, report back what software you have installed, and that your PC may be remotely shut down in error if some "pirate" with a keygen creates and registers the same install key you are using, leaving you with purchasing yet another "license" or turn to "piracy" as your only options.
Slashdot Mirror
BULLSHIT.
In one conversation I had with my Nigerian-born business partner (OK stop laughing I'm serious. He's been a naturalized citizen for ten years, is a Christian, the son of a pastor, and I know one of his brothers as well. He's good people.) I learned that it's very much like India multiplied in that no decisions are made without palms being greased. I also learned that Nigerians who come to America will not do business with other Nigerians due to the level of corruption. It's not that all Nigerians are corrupt, it's just that corruption is so pervasive that they don't trust one another.
(Interesting thing about him: he's very suspicious, is more pro-American than most native-born Americans, gets far more involved in politics than most of us do, and yet when he sees evil going on in this country he doesn't complain. He just laughs and says evil people will do evil things, and what can be accomplished by talking about it and then continues on with his work. As an aside, he's the most productive worker I've ever encountered as well.)
My guess? Some official initially chose Linux as the sensible solution, and then Microsoft's money greased a high-level official's palms. I don't think it's necessarily Microsoft that did it, but a third party (plausible deniability, elimination of a paper trail involving even swag, etc.) which somehow benefits from the sale of Windows rather than installation of a(n) (inexpensive|free)/free OS.
What EQ is lossless? There is always some distortion introduced.
Analog on vinyl is not lossless. From Wikipedia:
. .
[snip]
Think of it as analog dynamic range compression.
No kidding. However on the LAN the slowest point is the switch, which should never, ever throttle traffice by an order of magnitude or more. It should throttle only latency, and by 3ms at the very worst if you have an uber-crappy $30 switch. So, in the SOHO environment and certainly in the enterprise environment, this "minor" bug can have tremendous detrimental effects on usability.
And don't forget this is just the DRM bug, let alone the running out of memory when copying files bug.
ask Microsoft!
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/21/1441240
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=724
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2007/08/27/1833290.aspx
FWIW. PCI-E is supposed to allow for hot swap. I wouldn't do it on a home system, but were I involved in testing PCI-E components in a test lab, I would absolutely include hotplugging tests.
When DRM causes networking performance to drop by more than an order of magnitude, and device driver upgrades result in OS deactivation, one tends to ignore any other features which are claimed to be present, especially when legitimate paying customers are affected but "pirates" are unaffected by activation bugs.
People said no such thing about Win2K. The only real complaint was it required more memory than Win98, but it was considered a tremendous upgrade over Win98/98se, Me, and even NT 4.0. In fact it was such a HUGE improvement to the NT Family of operating systems that NO ONE missed NT 4.0, except perhaps a few paper MCSEs who loved that NT was sometimes a pain in the ass to add hardware to and were in fear of their jobs.
No, Win2K was a HUGE upgrade and no one had any real complaints about it compared to previous Windows versions. Likewise, aside from a few Activation concerns, there were few complaints about the Win2K3 upgrade. XP and Vista on the other hand, offered little in exchange for eye candy and DRM.
They sure do.
If we RTFA we will note:
If we RTFS we will note:
So yeah, a model helicopter need not apply. Besides, a $100 RC helicopter can barely carry a micro-camera, battery, and video transmitter, let alone the kind of payload NASA wants.
My guess? The part where prior art, algorithms, business methods, and inventions obvious to those skilled in the art became patentable.
Galactica 1980 was just a bad dream. It was a hoax posted to youtube. Much like Highlander II and Rocky V, it was never actually produced. /denial
Tagged this one: censorship netneutrality unlimitedinternet fraud
;)
So much for "unlimited Internet"
They really ought to call it "unlimited access to the comcast.net portal, access to everything else has to be approved by us."
I still can't get FIOS at home or at work - they will still run it only into single-family homes and into single-business structures around here. However once they do I'm thinking of switching. I download linux distro updates all the time, and last I checked that is legitimate content. Comcast should not be in the business of discriminating network traffic unless it's malicious and intended to disrupt the Internet at large (such as a worm or DDoS).
ipfw add deny tcp from any to any 6890 in tcpflags rst
mod_rewrite anyone?
tagged this article: obvioustothoseskilledintrade priorart
Excuse me, while I submit a patent application on "naming a URL on a web site such that it is easy for humans to remember"
Likewise, I think I will also apply for patent protection on "method for entering natural languages and/or numbers into a computer through a mechanical or electronic peripheral" with a complementary patent covering "method for laying out alphabets and numerals on strategically-placed buttons, imprints, or images" - I think I shall call such device a "keyboard" or "keypad"
I've posted about this issue before but was accused of making shit up just to slam Microsoft.
Wrong. I used to be a die-hard Microsoft fan, until they introduced the broken Activation scheme. Even back in the days of Windows XP. driver upgrades or reinstalls could de-activate Windows. This is why I am so adamantly against Activation schemes - at least schemes which do not allow for license transfers. It sucks, too. If delivering a bunch of workstations to a client where the client wants them pre-activated and added to their domain, you have to activate the system. Now, sometimes one will run into incompatibilities and have to upgrade a wireless driver or video driver (or add additional hardware - and yes, I've even seen USB device driver upgrades trigger deactivation) and if you've got the OEM version, guess what? You need to wait on hold with Microsoft to re-activate the system.
Granted, it doesn't happen often. It does have a knack of happening at exactly the wrong time.
Microsoft: you own the market. Drop the activation scheme. Also, where XP is nearing end of life, isn't it time to follow through with your promise to release a patch which will eliminate the need to activate Windows XP? I mean, Vista has been out for nearly a year now. . .
Do you need a Windows license to download the fonts? If so, do not want.
Are they free (as in both beer and speech) to redistribute? If not, do not want.
tagged this article "donotwant"
ipfw add deny tcp from any to any 6890 in tcpflags rst
. . .
It's been 9 seconds since you hit 'reply'.
I get it for the guide, mostly, plus the on demand programming. So they're pixellated. Big frigging deal. If I see a movie I like and care enough to watch again with a better quality picture, I buy the DVD. :)
Or maybe most people just don't want to pay the true cost of their phone so the service providers have to find some way to make sure they can still make a profit!
There are a lot of people out there willing to pay full price for even locked-down phones. iPhone, anyone?
Next up: book publishers will limit where you can read their books. I can see it now:
"Permission is granted to read this book only while sitting outdoors in the shade of a poplar tree. Reading this book in a coffee shop, in bed, on your sofa, in direct sun, or under the shade of any species of tree besides poplar is expressly forbidden. Also, while it is technically possible to use magnifying glasses and reading lamps to aid the reading of small printed text by those who are visually impaired, the use of magnification devices is also expressly forbidden therefore it is unlawful for you to do so."
There, I fixed your post for you.
It's funny because it's true. . .
. . . the less interested I become in their "product"
Keep fighting your customers, RIAA. You're alienating us all, thousands at a time. See my previous posts on the matter. I bought more CDs at the height of Napster (the original Napster) than I did in the 13 years of owning CD players previous to that. I have bought approximately SIX music CDs TOTAL since you succeeded in shutting down Napster (ded kitty -- http://i.afterdawn.com/news/napster_mainpage_2002_09_04.gif ).
What do I listen to now?
Music I already own.
Talk radio.
Classical.
Christian radio.
no new pop stations. No hard rock stations. I avoid getting exposed to new material, because if I listen to new material on the radio, I am supporting you indirectly by listening to paid-for-by-advertising content. If I listen to new material, I'd be tempted to download it, which will lead to viral marketing if I talk to so-and-so about this great new song I downloaded. . . and I would be tempted to purchase it, which would directly send you profits. No, instead I decided to completely avoid it and not be your customer, directly or indirectly. I'm sure I am not the only one.
In summary:
RIAA members, F*** you.
* centralized administration
* simplified administration
* Single login (why do you think Web Single Login is such a big deal at enterprise sites?)
* simple user experience; configure calendaring and email accounts is done in one step, in one place
* ability to forward meeting/event agenda without jumping through hoops
* GROUP calendaring and email are by nature integral - an integrated solution creates the meetings as one entity internally, tallies meeting requests receipt, responses, etc. plus it works together truly seamlessly. calendaring-over-webdav is a bit of a hack.
At one time long long ago I worked at what was at the time the calendaring application leader - but even then Microsoft's initial calendaring offerings were gaining market share. Not because they were superior (at the time they weren't) but because of the integration. When Exchange was released, it was all over. Integrated email, calendaring, notes, and task lists was the killer app corporations were long asking for (the vendor I worked for REFUSED to integrate their email and calendaring solutions, claiming it didn't make sense, despite being one of the sponsors of the ical/vcal standard). Microsoft may screw a lot of things up, and they rarely get operating systems right, but Exchange, for all its faults, was a major winner and it was innovative.
Yeah, well, Google clearly discloses what they do with email, and that keyword-based advertising may be displayed based on the contents of an email. They disclose what, how, and why.
Contrast this to the Windows EULA, which does NOT disclose the fact that the OS will phone home daily, report back what software you have installed, and that your PC may be remotely shut down in error if some "pirate" with a keygen creates and registers the same install key you are using, leaving you with purchasing yet another "license" or turn to "piracy" as your only options.